Falcon Robotics makes "Einstein" of ROBOSUB!

[falconmaster]

Thanks again to our wonderful Jill Johns for the day's summery. The Falcons have made it to the finals of the AUVSI & ONR International Robosub competition. They run tomorrow at 1:20 pm but tune in at 1pm for the live webcast. See link below. The team is currently in 7th place out of 31 teams, mostly universities, from 9 countries



Day 6 Robosub Competition – July 27, 2013

Today was a happy day! John and Dylan once again got to Transdec early and first. They were followed shortly by four other teams. Our team is causing waves and getting universities like Cornell to try and rethink rules to keep them competitive. They asked to change the sign-up rule to a lottery instead of first-come first-pick. Teams are taking notice of Falcon Robotics!



Our practice run was at 8:30 followed shortly after by our semi-final run at 9 am. The weather conditions were really good for our robot – cloudy and overcast with pretty much no sun. We didn’t really need to adjust any vision values and our robot was set. We got in the water and on our first autonomous run we went through the gate, went on a straight path, followed the first marker, hit the red buoy, followed the next marker and went through the next gate. Those are precisely the six missions we programmed the robot to make. Success! So many other teams have been struggling this year that we felt we had a pretty good chance. We knew we were in the top ten and closer to the top five. So we kept that first run and stopped the mission. We still had time so we did some practice runs with the lights on the robot turned on. For this year we found they didn’t help, but we got some good video footage and logged the runs so we have data to work with for next year.

Then it was just sitting around and waiting. We watched some more teams do their runs and talked to spectators who were interested in our robot. The event is free and open to the public, so many people came back to ask questions. Everyone is so impressed that we are high school team and our students have been able to accomplish so much. We had one more practice run. John adjusted the code to try and get more points on the last mission. It didn’t work well in the practice run but we still have time to work on the code. After that just more waiting and waiting.



Finally after 6 pm the last semi-finals were completed and the teams that were going on to the finals were announced. And WE MADE IT!! So on our third year of the competition we know we can compete with, and beat, the big teams. We were ranked seventh and they are taking seven teams plus a wild card team tomorrow. We mentors are so excited, and we are impressing upon the students how big this really is. We have the first practice time tomorrow and the first finals run in the afternoon. So we still have time to work on the code and try and get some additional points. Anything can happen. Some of the big giants have fallen, and we could just creep in there and take a higher spot. Even if we don’t we’ll be happy because we have met all of our goals for the competition. We are raising the bar and people are taking notice of Falcon Robotics.




The finals start around 1 pm tomorrow, and all the runs are on live streaming on the Internet. We hope everybody will watch us. So tune in tomorrow to: http://www.auvsifoundation.org/found...tions/robosub/ at 1 pm.

[protoserge]

That's awesome! Congratulations!

Do you have any more photos of this?

[s_forbes]

Fredi has a photo album here that is being updated every day (good for folks like me who couldn't go!)

These ROVs are a huge step up over FIRST robots in terms of complexity. There are a lot of systems that need to integrate seamlessly for the robot to complete its tasks. I am extremely impressed with what the team has accomplished.

Go Falcons! Best of luck in the finals this afternoon!

[z_beeblebrox]

The finals are live now at:
http://new.livestream.com/accounts/3...events/2280186

[qzrrbz]

Way to go guys! Sad when you can't depend upon the sun to stay hidden! :-)

[DampRobot]

I have to say, that is a sick looking robot! I especially like the gold ano, it reminds me of the robonauts. The thick cable runs are cool too.

[falconmaster]

Day 7 Robosub!

Thanks again to all our supporters and friends and family. The following is a summary of the days activities.



Day 7 Robosub 2013 Competition – July 28, 2013

One last day at Transdec and the Robosub competition. We still got up early and arrived around 7 am. We had a practice time at 8 am, so we needed to have everything ready. The weather was still overcast and cloudy and we were hoping it would hold on and last a while longer. During the practice run we tried a new task, which was to have the robot move sideways through a gate, like parallel parking. It worked pretty well after a little adjustment for drift and we were anxious to see how it would work during the actual competition. Then it was just wait, wait, wait.



Finally the official final competition started at 1 pm. Before the competition several of the obstacles were moved to different positions than the practice set-up. One path in particular that was pointing right to a gate all during practice time as aimed at the post instead of the center of the gate. And the gate was turned to a very different angle. Not very nice, Dave! So we had a little bit of time to crunch numbers and work on the settings, but we were first up. And wouldn’t you know it, the sun peeked through just a little bit. It was enough to throw off our settings some.



We were ready to go by 1:20 pm and Disarae was in the media booth with Zoz Brooks to do a play-by-play. Our robot started off great and approached the red buoy. But it had been moved just a little bit and our robot thought it hit the buoy before it actually did. So we brought it back to the beginning to do a little change in the code and start over again. By then the sun made a difference in how the robot saw color, and we weren’t able to track the path. Also, one of the thrusters lost power because the connection came lose. Put it all together and it kind of spelled disaster for Sovereign Falcon 2.0. We did struggle for the rest of the 20 minutes and were only able to accomplish going through the gate. Then all we could do was watch the other robots and see what they were capable of. We don’t have the final rankings yet but we know we didn’t finish in the top five.



Although the competition didn’t end on a high note, we are still very proud that we made it to the finals and that our robot completed all the tasks it was programmed to do during the semi-final run. We certainly accomplished a lot and we now have a checklist of things to work on so we can be more competitive next year. We already have new innovative ideas and are working on more partnerships to develop some different techniques. So we’ll move forward – onward and upward.



We ended the evening by going to the awards dinner, which was a luau on the beach. We enjoyed some good food and then listened as the special awards were given out. We weren’t expecting anything, so we were pretty surprised when they called our school for one of three best outreach programs! We received a check for $500, so that was just a great bonus. Now we’ll have to find a way to top our outreach programs again. We won’t party too much because we’ll get up and leave early tomorrow morning. Phoenix, here we come.



Thanks again Jill for writing the summary. We finished 8th in the finals and that makes us 8th in the world right now, not bad for a bunch of teenagers from south Phoenix! We are already making plans to remedy the problems we encountered in the finals for next year. We will be back and raring to go, we still have unfinished business. That ends our reports for this years Robosub, See ya!

more info here
http://www.auvsifoundation.org/found...tions/robosub/

final runs here
http://new.livestream.com/accounts/3...events/2280186

[nicholsjj]

Just wanted to say that I was watching the local news last night and the falcons were the feature team for the robosub piece that they ran. Congrats on the success!